Diversity in doubt as censorship board looks to fill vacancies

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Banfield, Carroll, Clark, Fenton, Greene, Hunt, Sanderson, Smith
and Townsend. It sounds like a rollcall from Tom Brown's School
Days. In fact, these are the names of the members of the Office
of Film and Literature Classification board, the people who make
decisions about which films and computer games Australians can
see.

According to the Classification Act of 1995, the board members
are also supposed to be broadly representative of the Australian
community. Yet based on publicly available information, the current
board does not appear to be ethnically diverse, nor does it or the
office's review board include members under the age of 25, as
representative of those who play computer games and attend the
cinema more frequently than any other group of Australians.

This is happening at a time when 22 per cent of Australian
residents were born overseas, most hailing from Britain, Italy, New
Zealand or Vietnam, and a year after a coalition of Commonwealth,
state and territory ministers for youth, education, employment and
training released a publication stating they were committed to
"creating more opportunities for engagement in government
decision-making processes" for young Australians.

Now, some of the jobs are up for grabs. As many as 20 members
sit on the censorship board on a full-time or part-time basis, and
last month the office put out a national call for applications for
full- and part-time members, offering full-time positions paying
$91,680 including superannuation. The office is not certain how
many new members will be chosen, and said membership depends on the
board's workload. Board members are recruited for three-year
terms.

Applications, which closed on July 8, are being processed by the
Everest Consulting Group which has been employed by the
Attorney-General's Department, which oversees the appointments. A
spokeswoman from the department could not comment on the make-up of
the existing censorship boards, but said age and ethnicity were
considered when choosing members.

"We don't make appointments on the basis of ethnicity," the
spokeswoman said. "All applicants need to compete on the basis of
merit, but there are other considerations."

She said that while a strong focus was put on applicants'
community involvement, their gender and the state and city they
came from were also considered.

Two current members of the classification office's main board
are Tasmanian-born, while only one member comes from NSW, and no
one appears to have been born or raised in Sydney.

The Council for Multicultural Australia said it has never been
consulted about the composition of the censorship boards.